No fault with fluoride quiz answers

The Advertising
Standards Authority has found no fault with the answers to
the fluoride quizzes run earlier this year. The Authority
has simply ruled that, because FANNZ is an advocacy
organization, it needed to identify whether the answers were
established fact or only FANNZ’ opinion.

The Authority
said that simply stating on the quizzes that FANNZ is an
advocacy organization might have been sufficient.

In fact,
most of the answers are established, or generally accepted,
fact. The remaining four are all supported by current
evidence-based science, although opposing advocacy groups
might consider other answers to be correct. Of course
extremists such as the complainant’s group refuse to
accept anything against fluoridation as a
religious/political posturing, no matter how settled the
science is.

On many points the complainant accepted that
the answer was correct, but simply argued about how the
public would react to these facts. As an example of the
extremism of the complaints the complainant says that “the
claim that tooth decay is primarily caused by poor diet is
… alarmist”.

In a recent online debate international
fluoridation expert Dr Paul Connett, who recently visited
NZ, fully discredited this groups’ claims, which they
could not support with credible science. Neither would any
bona fide fluoridation-promoting organization support their
claims in an open public scientific forum held in Wellington
in March.

Even in the High Court, Justice Hansen recently
stated “with all the evidence against fluoridation it is a
wonder anyone still supports it”.

The evidence for and
against fluoridation will be presented to the Kapiti Coast
District Council at a special tribunal-style hearing on
fluoridation on 21
May.

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